Sep. 29, 2012

C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb, left, joins Gov. Mitch Daniels for a conversation on higher education Thursday at Purdue's Loeb Playhouse. Daniels will become Purdue's president in January, when his term as governor is finished. / By Brent Drinkut/Journal & Courier

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Ohio State University President Gordon Gee spent $7.7 million on top of his record-setting compensation in the past five years to travel, entertain and maintain the president's home, according to Dayton Daily News analysis. / AP photo

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Mitch Daniels had answered the question several times and in several places since being named Purdue University’s next president: Will you move into Westwood?

The simple question received a bit of a winding, yes-and-no answer from Daniels. Boiled down: He and his wife, Cheri, will keep their home in Carmel — the one built with the express thought of the grandkids who are starting to arrive in their lives. But he’s going to move into Westwood — “make it my home base.” That arrangement, he laughed, meant that he’d have to buy some new furniture for Westwood, given that the things the family owns will stay an hour south.

Still, he said about Westwood, “don’t spend a nickel. I have to hang some pictures, I understand. It’s fine by me (as it is).”

Coincidence or calculated, the question about Westwood — where Purdue’s presidents have lived and done much of the requisite entertaining that goes with the job — and the governor’s apparent frugality about dressing it up are framed against reports of extravagance by one of Daniels’ future Big Ten counterparts.

Ohio State officials chalked it up to the price of doing business at one of the biggest public universities in the nation. And no one was complaining about Gee’s style when it comes to beefing up Ohio State’s coffers with private donations — $1.6 billion since 2007, the university reported — and university-pinned economic development in the state.

Face it, Gee is good at what he does — whether in fundraising or burnishing his reputation as a friend of the students. (Personal note: Gee was president of the University of Colorado for my final year at the school. Students really did love him, especially when he cruised campus in his bow tie and CU-dotted black pants the day before football games.)

But consider what went into that $7.7 million over the past five years, according to the Daily News account: $64,000 for bow ties, bow-tie cookies, bow-tie pins and O-H pins that were handed out to brand his image and the university’s name; $10,132 for limousine rides on 16 occasions between 2008 and 2010 (that’s $633 a trip); $895,000 for parties and receptions in his home; and $813,000 for tailgating.

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Now, it might be hard to tell whether $162,600 a year over the past five seasons for tailgating is an exorbitant amount at a football-crazy university. But you’re enough of a savvy shopper to know that you’ll be hard-pressed in the aisles of Bed, Bath and Beyond to find a $532 shower curtain for the guest bathroom. It’s in the list of bills turned up at Ohio State.

Gee has left a trail of pricy renovations at his other appointments, including $6 million to renovate the chancellor’s mansion at Vanderbilt. According to the Wall Street Journal, Gee’s tab for a personal chef and parties at the Nashville, Tenn., school was more than $700,000 a year.

Last week, days after the Dayton Daily News report, a Pew Charitable Trust analysis showed 19 percent of U.S. households were carrying college debt. That was up from 15 percent in 2007 and double the percentage in 1989. That sort of growth isn’t sustainable if colleges are going to remain any sort of a bargain.

Every story about limousines or lavish parties or crazy-priced shower curtains lets students and taxpayers know where they stand.

While Purdue’s largesse for Córdova this summer wasn’t exactly ringing the bell on the E. Gordon Gee scale, it stands as a blatant bit of disconnect on the part of Purdue.

“It’s just another example of their inefficiency and proof they live in an ivory-tower world,” state Rep. Jeff Espich, R-Uniondale, told the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette in July. “One of my greater regrets of leaving is to not be able to follow through on this.”

Espich, a frequent critic of Purdue and other state universities for their spending and steeper tuitions, is retiring after 40 years at the Statehouse. But Purdue can’t expect to go unchallenged next year.

To his credit, Daniels seems to get that. In the fast-moving Q&A Thursday, the governor covered a lot of the ground he’s been covering during a series of public forums and private meetings in the past month on campus. That included his promise to constantly remind faculty and staff that nearly every dollar they spend comes from taxpayers or from student fees. Don’t waste it, he said.

Which is about when Lamb, smooth and in control even when not asking all of the questions, pressed Daniels to justify the pay of Matt Painter and Danny Hope, head coaches who make seven-figure salaries, and that of the Purdue president.

That question, too, led Daniels on a winding response about the excesses of big-time college athletics and his expectations for Purdue’s athletic department. Namely: 1. Keep your nose clean and don’t do anything that embarrasses the university. 2. Make sure the student part of student-athlete comes first. 3. Have the athletic department pay for itself. (“Do those three things,” Daniels said, “then I really want you to win.”)

But the path of that answer never did wind back to coaches’ compensation. And it didn’t touch on the compensation package Daniels is still negotiating before he hits the West Lafayette campus for real in mid-January.

Daniels has a memorandum of understanding that his contract will be largely driven by measurable incentives. Córdova made $465,750 in her final year, not counting other perks or the 2 percent raise she received on top of that for the sabbatical year that started at her retirement. There’s a reason why so many people are waiting to see Daniels’ final deal. What Daniels says he can live with will tell a lot about where Purdue is going.